Koh, Dong-Yeon
고동연 高東延

The Power of the Interpreting Subject: The Clash Between Critics and Artists

 

Dong-Yeon Koh

 

Our conversation may be becoming a little repetitive. Still, the more historical examples we bring in, the more precise our discussion can become. As someone trained in art history, I find it interesting when you, as a philosopher of aesthetics, approach art-historical events from a different perspective. The same event can lead us in different directions depending on what we choose to focus on, and the conversation naturally begins to change. I would like to share a few thoughts prompted by the dispute between Ruskin and Whistler.

 

This is not simply a historical example of a clash between representation and abstraction, or between different styles and tastes. It raises a more fundamental question: “What is art,” and “how much freedom should art be allowed?” That is why the dispute remains interesting nearly 150 years after 1877, especially when we consider conflicts between critics and artists who champion new tastes or styles. Then, as now, artists have sought to break free from the aesthetic standards and social rules of earlier generations. Sometimes the struggle itself becomes a scandal, and the scandal brings the artist fame and public attention. The fight over artistic freedom has never ended; only its rules have changed.

 

To briefly recount what happened, John Ruskin, one of the leading art critics in Britain at the time, attacked James McNill Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1875). Depicting a fireworks display in London, the painting focuses less on clearly representing its subject than on capturing scattered light, color, and a fleeting atmosphere against a dark ground. Even the title conveys something of the artist’s intention. Ruskin, then one of Britain’s most prominent writers and critics, mocked Whistler for producing a painting that seemed like throwing a pot of paint in the public’s face and then asking 200 guineas for it. For Ruskin, who valued close observation of nature and diligent workmanship, Whistler’s painting was difficult to accept.

 

Returning to the dispute, Whistler rejected the idea that art must faithfully represent nature or convey a moral lesson. He believed that art could stand on the relationships between color and form, and on the visual effects of the painting itself. The dispute went to court in 1878. Whistler sued Ruskin for libel, and the jury found in Whistler’s favor. But the damages awarded amounted to just one farthing, a merely symbolic sum, while the legal costs dealt Whistler a serious financial blow. He won in court, but at a considerable cost in real life. Whistler was already struggling financially at the time, and the lawsuit further worsened his situation.

 

Still, I do not want to read this episode simply as a clash between Ruskin’s outdated moralism and Whistler’s progressive view of art. Ruskin was concerned with labor, making, and art’s social responsibilities in an industrial society. Whistler sought to free art from purposes imposed on it from outside. Yet Whistler’s claim for artistic autonomy also became a new norm. Despite the financial consequences, the scandal helped make him one of the best-known artists in Britain and America at the time. Moreover, Whistler’s commitment to “art for art’s sake” later passed through Clement Greenberg’s modernist criticism, in which artistic autonomy and the purity of the medium became powerful aesthetic standards. What had once been a language of liberation could become another set of rules.

 

Here I agree with your concern about the power of critics, though I see the issue somewhat differently. Critics and curators clearly exercise power when they select and interpret works and construct art-historical narratives. Yet history shows that critics do not always have the final word. Ruskin held enormous authority in his own time, but today Whistler’s works are held in museums and he is remembered in art history as a fiercely defiant artist. Ruskin’s attack has itself become a historical example through which we discuss the limits of criticism and the freedom of art. American art historians, in particular, have often taken Whistler’s side in revisiting this episode.

 

Of course, not every artist ultimately wins. Many artists and works never make it into the historical record. But it is equally presumptuous to think that critics can monopolize the meaning and future of a work. Critics wield power, but they cannot control the entire life of a work. A work’s meaning is not determined solely by the intentions of the artist or the critic; it continues to change as audiences, institutions, and new interpretations enter the picture in different periods. What I may be wary of, then, is not so much the power of critics itself as their tendency to overestimate that power.

 

That does not mean I intend to take the artist’s side. I am uncomfortable with critics and curators who make overly confident judgments about works, but I am equally uncomfortable with artists who react too sensitively to criticism and cast themselves as victims. Bringing such disputes into the public sphere and developing them into serious debate can be important, but there are limits. (I admit that I am not yet ready to say exactly where those limits lie.) Artists, too, cannot control how their work will be remembered or interpreted. Artists often describe their works as their “children,” but, much like children, works eventually take on lives of their own.

 

In recent years, the Korean art world has shown growing interest in British thinkers and writers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including Ruskin. I find this trend especially intriguing. Why are the writings of people who reflected on industrialization, making, labor, and materiality in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries being read again in the age of AI? Perhaps in a time when images can be generated endlessly and information circulates at great speed, handmaking and the sensory experience of physical objects have taken on renewed importance.

 

Yet we should also be wary of looking to the past for ready-made answers to the present. Past ideas can serve as a mirror for contemporary problems, but they cannot solve those problems for us. I was once interested in theories of ruins that became fashionable in nineteenth-century archaeology and architecture; they can look like a fresh new idea when rediscovered today. But from the perspective of the nineteenth century, Ruskin’s world was shaped by economic, social, and technological conditions very different from our own. Neither the value Ruskin placed on labor and making nor Whistler’s claim for artistic autonomy offers a permanent answer. What was radical in one period can become conservative in another.

 

So I am not particularly interested in deciding who was right, Ruskin or Whistler. What interests me as an art historian is that their dispute brought together not only aesthetic convictions but also reputation, economic interests, institutional authority, personal pride, and the desire for power. I am less a philosopher of aesthetics than an art historian and cultural theorist, and sometimes I feel closer to a gossip who tries to read human nature behind the official account of art history. Rather than deciding who was right, I am interested in how each person’s convictions took shape and how those judgments were overturned over time. And although the present often feels entirely different from the past, it too will eventually become history.

 

Why, then, should we care about a dispute that took place in another country 150 years ago? Because it reminds us that the standards of the present are not eternal. History does not provide ready-made answers. What I value as an art historian is precisely this: history allows us to step back from the ideas and discourses that dominate a particular moment. Today’s progressive position may look conservative in the future, and those who seem to have won now may be remembered very differently later. We have invented countless ways to record the past and present, yet the question of what is true can sometimes seem almost meaningless in a world saturated with records and competing claims. History offers a way to pause and gain distance from that confusion.

 

Who wins, the critic or the artist? Sometimes the artist wins, and sometimes the critic does. But over a longer period, the very criteria by which victory is judged can change. Rather than confirming one side’s triumph, history asks us to reconsider what we saw, the perspective from which we judged, and the moment in which we declared someone the winner. Our views and evaluations can change remarkably depending on where we stand in time. In a rapidly changing world, the freedom history offers—or the strength it gives me to continue as an art historian—may lie precisely in that distance.

 

Dorian, I used the example you offered not so much to disagree with the view suggested in your essay as to think it through from another angle. In contemporary art, cases like this often deteriorate into gossip, making serious discussion difficult. In any case, thank you.

​